BNSF CEO sees record 2013 capex

BNSF Railway CEO Matt Rose says his railroad set a company record for capital investment in 2012, but expects to exceed that level in the coming year. BNSF has yet to release a specific figure for 2013.

Rose said that beyond required infrastructure maintenance, BNSF will be "looking at places like AllianceTexas, where we've been expanding the (intermodal) parking facilities up there to handle more containers. We've got a lot of expansion because of our crude business. We're putting in some double track, some triple track, some new sideings, to be able to handle that 500,000 barrels a day of crude."

Rose, interviewed by the Fort Worth, Tex., Star-Telegram, said he expects "crude-by-rail" to grow to 1 million barrels per day.

The complementary traffic growth tandem of intermodal and crude oil movement has compensated for declining coal volume in 2012, which Rose described as "in trauma," and to which the CEO ascribed natural gas competition and looming environmental regulatory issues on the